CHICAGO — While thousands of air travelers were stranded or severely delayed by canceled flights as a wind-swept snowstorm blanketed the Midwest and Great Lakes region, Amtrak’s sold-out trains suffered only a few significant setbacks nationwide over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.
Only the Floridian was delayed an hour and a half leaving Chicago Saturday (Nov. 29) despite about 8 inches of windblown snow falling all day. Amtrak mechanical forces braved the elements to get the trains out.
A Trains.com visit to Union Station this afternoon, when all departing trains were sold out, revealed more organized crowd handling than past Thanksgivings. Instead of travelers lining up in the Great Hall, then marching down to the platforms, they could relax around the hall’s big Christmas tree and, when their train was called, proceed to the passage under Canal Street to join a boarding line.
Although on-time departures were the rule, a snag occurred when the locomotive of the inbound Texas Eagle, which had been on time, suffered a “mechanical assessment” north of Joliet, apparently blocking the path of its westbound counterpart. As a result, the westbound Eagle passengers who were aboard for an on-time departure at 1:52 p.m., did not leave the station until 4:09 p.m. Passengers from the beleaguered eastbound Eagle were bused.
Earlier setbacks
A handful of interruptions occurred late Thursday into Friday. Amtrak spokesman Marc Magliari tells Trains.com that a suspected debris strike disabled eastbound Wolverine No. 352 on Thanksgiving evening near Marshall, Mich., east of Battle Creek. A Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office press release says 107 passengers were transported by Marshall Public Schools buses to the Amtrak station in Battle Creek, where they were picked up by badly delayed eastbound Wolverine No. 354. That train arrived in Pontiac, Mich., at 7:53 a.m. Friday. Thursday’s westbound No. 355, stuck east of the other two trains, limped into Chicago at 6:53 a.m. Friday instead of 10:40 p.m. Thursday.
Also, early Friday morning at St. Louis, a massive fire in a vacant warehouse near the tracks blocked all rail traffic through the area. Lincoln Service equipment intended for early-morning train Nos. 300 and 302 was stranded at the station, so Amtrak substituted buses. But these were isolated exceptions.
Weather did impact a number of regional and long-distance trains. Two eastbound Empire Builders fought blowing snow and were running one to two hours late Saturday; the westbound train that day lost four hours in Wisconsin due to an “intermittent communication outage and rail congestion,” while the eastbound Builder encountered a disabled BNSF Railway freight east of Libby, Mont., early today, resulting in a five-hour delay. However, as has been typical over past holidays, fewer freight trains resulted in less interference around the network.
The heavily traveled Northeast Corridor did experience a few disruptions. On Saturday, Washington-bound Northeast Regional No. 121 departed New York almost two hours late, as did No. 122, its return trip. WJAR-TV reports that on Sunday, Acela No. 2153 from Boston, operating with a legacy trainset, terminated at Providence after a fire erupted under one of the cars. The two Washington-bound Acelas that followed were delayed more than an hour.
Accommodating the crowds
Despite walk-up fares approaching $300 on Sunday [see “Capacity pinch points…,” Trains.com Nov. 24, 2025], of the 37 Washington-New York round trips, 14 trains to New York and seven to Washington were sold out or blocked for sale in coach or Acela business class as of midday Saturday. The busiest segment appears to be Baltimore-Wilmington, Del., where there are no commuter rail alternatives, although the majority of Sunday Harrisburg-Philadelphia-New York eastbound Keystones were also sold out as of Saturday.
In the Midwest, in addition to total sellouts on the Detroit and St. Louis corridors, Sunday sellouts spread to all midday Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawathas and the Borealis in both directions.
